What Will Be the Last Gadget Standing at CES 2019?

By
Michael Miller8 Jan 2019, 2:49 a.m.

Join me and other judges on January 11 at the Las Vegas Convention Center to see the on-stage competition. Until then, here are the finalists.

Every year, I enjoy judging the annual Last Gadget Standing competition at the CES show. The products in the competition are rarely the ones that get the biggest headlines at the show—no 8K TVs or 5G phones this year—but they are usually fun and interesting. This year's nominees include a variety of products that stand out by doing something different from the everyday.

Harry Potter Kano Coding Kitis a build-it-yourself wireless wand that teaches how to code and learn about sensors. Following the step-by-step coding manual, you build a wand and learn about sensors, data, and code along the way. The wand combines a gyroscope, accelerometer, and magnetometer so it can track hand movements; and once you've built it, you can unlock a variety of Harry Potter settings and complete more than 70 coding challenges. It sounds like a great way to teach coding to fans.

The HP Spectre Folio is a luxury laptop with a difference: it comes bonded to a leather-bound case, so it looks like a high-end notebook. It's actually a convertible that you can use as a traditional notebook, a tablet, or in an easel mode for viewing video. It has a 13.3-inch display, a low-power Intel Y-series processor, and a claimed 18-hour battery life. I've been using it (and am taking it to CES) and hope to have a full report next week. But in the meantime, here's PCMag's review.

IQbuds Boost from Nuheara is an innovative assistive listening device. Earlier versions of the product served as noise-canceling earbuds that could be tuned to improve your ability to hear in particular environments, such as noisy restaurants or automobiles. But the Boost version goes one step further by adding Ear ID, a clinically-backed audiometric hearing assessment that calibrates the earbuds to the way you hear. The result is a truly wireless product that lets runs a clinically-approved hearing test, so it's perfect for people who have minor hearing loss. I've been trying these out as well, and they really fill a need in the market.

Mixxtapeis a music player that looks like an old-school cassette. As with most music players, you can load songs from your computer in all the standard formats. Then, you can listen to them via the headphone jack, Bluetooth, or – most impressively– by putting the drive into a standard cassette tape player. The nostalgia factor is strong.

Oriifrom Origami Labs is a smart ring designed to let you send and receive text, make calls, and use your voice assistant in noisy environments without using a headphone or earbuds. Instead, you just hold your ring finger up to the side of your ear. It certainly sounds more convenient than pulling out your earbuds.

Owl Car Cam is a dash cam with dual-facing HD cameras that uses LTE and connections to track what happens in and around your car. Like most dashboard cameras, It can show you what happened in a crash, but it can also show you what is happening during a break-in, and even as anti-theft floodlights to help protect your car.

Vuze XR from Human Eyes combines a 360-degree camera and a 3D camera for VR 180 in a single device. The nifty device can have one camera on each side for a 2D 360-degree view, or you can twist it around to get a dual-camera 360-degree image. The basic video is at 5.7K resolution with 18 MP still image capture, and it includes the ability to live broadcast and share to social media in both Google and Facebook formats. It's a neat twist on the VR camera market.

Yubikey 5 NFCis a hardware authentication device that supports multiple protocols, including FIDO2. In a world where account breaches have become so commonplace, multi-factor authentication is getting more attention; and perhaps the safest method is a hardware key. Yubikey has been the biggest vendor of such keys, and the latest version supports NFC so it can work with mobile devices as well as PCs. It's an important step forward towards better security.

In addition, there will be two other currently unannounced products on stage, including one wearable and one audio product.

Usually, the on-stage competition among the finalists is both interesting and entertaining, as the contestants try to convince the audience to vote for their product. This year's competition will take place at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, January 11 in room N255 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. I hope to see many of you there.

About the Author

Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.

Until late 2006, Miller was the Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, responsible for overseeing the editorial positions of Ziff Davis's magazines, websites, and events. As Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Publishing since 1997, Miller took an active role in helping to identify new editorial needs in the marketplace and in shaping the editorial positioning of every Ziff … See Full Bio